Re: Neues von David

All parts should go together without forcing. You must remember that the parts you are reassembling were disassembled by you. Therefore, if you can't get them together again, there must be a reason. By all means, do not use a hammer.
(1925 IBM Maintenance Manual)

Re: Neues von David

Zitat von »"runsforcelery"«

Official answer: Dunno.

The next solo book is completed. Eric is currently working on his part of the next collaborative book, however, and it covers much of the same time period but in a different area of operations. The areas of operations of the two books converge however, in both space and time, and until we see exactly how the collaboration comes out (and, especially, ends), we don't know whether it or the next solo needs to be released first.

Soon as Eric and I get finished with that project, we'll be able to give you a schedule. I could well be wrong, but my guess right now is that the soonest we'll be looking at another Honorverse novel would be sometime around the end of the year, though. Sorry!

On the other hand, 2013 is going to be Honor's 20th birthday year, and you should be seeing a lot of stuff that year. And Joelle Presby has finished what I think is a very, very good piece about young women in the GSN which will be appearing on the Baen site Sometime Real Soon Now. I highly recommend it!

DRM (...) represent(s) an exercise in mindless stupidity that would shame any self-respecting dinosaur
Eric Flint; http://www.baens-universe.com/articles/principle
Random pithy quote: Never take life seriously. Nobody gets out alive anyway.. (jiltanith.thefifthimperium.com)

Zitat

So, Sharon and I got back from LA late Thursday night, and very glad to get home, we were, given how worn out we were (and how badly we need missed the kids ). The trip was absolutely, totally, completely worthwhile, though. We spent three solid days meeting with the folks at Evergreen Films on the Honorverse movie project, and it was as exciting as it was exhausting. (If you want a better feel for exactly who Evergreen is, I invite you to go take a look at http://www.evergreenfilms.com. I know I was impressed when I did.) 

We're still at a very early stage of creating the imagery for the movie, and Evergreen needs to consider the fact that to make a movie a financial success requires expanding viewership well beyond the fandom base even of a series which has been ongoing as long as the Honorverse has. At the same time, they're very respectful of the existing fans, for several reasons. One of them happens to be that Mike Devlin, Evergreen's CEO, is himself a major Honor fan, which has a lot to do with why Evergreen snapped up the rights to the project. I've had a lot of talks with Mike, and I think he truly understands Honor's character, the personal relationships which are critical to who and what she is, and the importance of characters, background, and -- for want of a better term -- texture to good storytelling. Although Evergreen is very much cutting edge in CGI and 3D technology, in the opinions of the people we just spent a week talking to, all of the geewhiz special effects take second place behind the need to tell as compelling and absorbing a story as possible. (Not that they don't have some really neat geewhiz stuff. Part of it is a proprietary software system -- they call it the "prototyper" -- that duplicates actors, sets, camera angles, and lighting before they ever shoot the actual scene. Essentially, they can produce a "dry run" on screen before production even takes place, tracking every actor, every camera, every lighting angle, every lighting value, etc. The only other folks who have anything even remotely similar at this point are James Cameron and George Lucas, and Evergreen's is newer and takes advantage of intervening advances. What I'm trying to say here is that it's really, really cool. )

Inevitably, at such an early stage, we're still feeling our way in several aspects of the entire project, but a very coherent skeleton is already emerging. One part of that skeleton is Evergreen's strong desire to have me involved and to have my input integrated into their thinking as broadly as possible. It doesn't mean that I'm going to have creative control of the project, which only makes sense, since it's a medium quite different from the one in which I normally work. It does mean that they are showing me art, asking for my opinion of it, asking for my input on how it might be changed or improved, discussing character mixes, how best to show the interaction between characters -- especially Honor and Nimitz -- and where and how to begin the first of what they hope will be several movies. There are so many books in the Honorverse, and so much historical background both inside and outside of Honor's personal experience, that a moviemaker has a really broad canvas to work from, and Evergreen wants to maintain that feel of . . . spaciousness, perhaps, in the movies, as well. That offers us some options that a standalone book adaptation wouldn't have, but it also offers the potential for pitfalls if we aren't careful, and everyone at Evergreen seems determined to avoid the aforesaid pitfalls.

For those of you who have been wondering, we'll be beginning with Honor of the Queen, not On Basilisk Station. There are some solid reasons for that, and I came down in favor of that decision well before Evergreen finally made up its mind which starting point to choose. I love OBS, but the nature of the tension between Honor and her crew in that book, the way in which her command style wins the crew over, and the basis for the conflict between her and Klaus Hauptman, the politics behind Basilisk Station being regarded as the RMN's dumping grounds, and the nature of the Havenite threat in that book all make it much more problematic, in my opinion, as the basis for a standalone movie. Going with HotQ (probably with at least some flashback to OBS) gives us a story line and a conflict which will be much easier and "cleaner" to set up in a medium which doesn't allow the amount of narrative explanation which can be achieved in a novel.

There's general agreement at Evergreen (which I share) that certain aspects of the visual imagery are going to be especially critical, and Patrick Tatopolous (who's worked on "Stargate," "Underworld," and "I, Robot," among other projects), who's been chosen as Art Director, has that firmly in the front of his mind, as does Scott Kroopf, Evergreen's chief creative officer. Scott's executive produced or produced over 80 movies, including "The Chronicles of Riddick," "Pitch Black," and "The Last Samurai," which gives him an interesting breadth of experience, I think.

Frankly, the number one issue is going to be bringing Nimitz to the screen and integrating his relationship with Honor into the screenplay in a way which will allow people not already familiar with the books to recognize that Nimitz is far more than simply a pet. I'm sure nobody will be surprised to learn that the "Evergreen Nimitz" isn't going to look exactly like anything we've already seen in print. Partly, that's because Evergreen is going to be able to do things in terms of modeling musculature, skeleton, facial expression, the movement of ears, etc., that simply can't be done by a cover artist. Partly it's because movies are such an intensely visual environment that they almost have to do more in developing the treecats' physical appearance because of how long he's going to be on-screen and how critical his relationship with Honor actually is. One consequence of that is that Nimitz will almost certainly spend less time on Honor's shoulder than he does in the books. There are several reasons for that, including the fact that without the internal POV a writer can inject into a novel, a lot more about understanding the relationship between characters -- especially when one of them is incapable of speech -- is going to require much greater visual cueing, and having Nimitz spend more time moving on his own will probably help to defuse any perceptions that he's a dependent appendage of Honor. Readers already know that he's a capable, fully sapient character because of the time they've spent "inside Honor's head," but that's going to have to be communicated to movie viewers who lack that advantage from external, visual cues.

DRM (...) represent(s) an exercise in mindless stupidity that would shame any self-respecting dinosaur
Eric Flint; http://www.baens-universe.com/articles/principle
Random pithy quote: Never take life seriously. Nobody gets out alive anyway.. (jiltanith.thefifthimperium.com)

Zitat

Another factor, of course, is that combining a CGI Nimitz with a live actor Honor as a passenger on her shoulder presents both technical challenges and a lot greater opportunity for failure of the viewers' ability to suspend disbelief. I don't think we've quite hit the exact Nimitz we want to use at this stage, but the truth is that it would be astounding if we had. I do think we're headed very much in the right direction, however, and developing the nature of the relationship between the Nimitz and Honor of the movie will be a bit tricky. No one's going to play fast and loose with the chronology of that relationship -- that is, no one's contemplating anything which would alter or undercut the transformational change which occurs in the assassination attempt at Protector's Palace -- but it's going to be necessary to clearly establish for a newcomer that Honor and Nimitz were already exchanging information on complex, cognitive levels before that event. In the books, Honor knows that Nimitz understands Standard English quite well and we have examples of his responding to questions from her with clear yes, no, or maybe gestures. That aspect of their ability to communicate will probably be punched up somewhat in early scenes to underscore it for those who have not read the novels.

Another point that established fans are going to have to deal with will undoubtedly be the physical appearance of the ships. The Honorverse ships which have appeared in the books in prose description, and the illustrations BuNine produced for House of Steel, etc., were designed around a particular set of constraints imposed by the physics of the Honorverse. This tended to produce nearly identical hull forms, much as the constraints imposed by, say, Atlantic sea conditions impose nearly identical hull forms on wet-navy warships which all use the same system of propulsion. One of the problems with shifting from a literary to a primarily visual storytelling medium, however, is that the viewer needs to be able to distinguish between ships -- and especially between the navies those ships belong to -- from purely visual cues. Moreover, viewers need to be able to do that from very brief glimpses of those ships. If a scene shows the exterior of a cruiser for no more than a second or two, the distinguishing cues between a Manticoran and a Peep heavy cruiser need to be sufficient to register on the audience. Perhaps the best way to put it would be to say that the navies need to be plainly "branded" enough for the movie audience to keep track of them.

Because of this, there's going to be a significant degree of "reimagining" the ships, although I think I can guarantee that the redesign process won't step on the established physics of the Honorverse. We had a conference which lasted just over an hour with Patrick, Mike, Scott, Richard Browne (Evergreen's Executive VP for Gaming and Interactive), and me -- and in which Tom Pope participated via videoconferencing from the perspective of all the work BuNine's done on the Honorverse -- which gives me quite a bit of confidence at this point. I don't say that the final product is going to be something which would have occurred to me on my own, because it won't, but the nature of a movie is collaborative, and the people Evergreen's bringing in to deal with this aspect of the project are far better versed than I am on its graphics/visual aspect.

In addition to the movie itself, Evergreen is planning a cross-platform approach to the Honorverse as a whole. The intention is to produce a franchise which is deep enough and broad enough to sustain multiple movies, which is one of the considerations that makes the broadening of the fan base a primary consideration. At the moment, we're looking at a graphic novel, to be produced by Top Cow Production, which will be very strongly based on the existing novels. In addition, there will be an iOS/Android game, developed by Idol Minds in Colorado, scheduled for early 2014, which will not seek to be a comprehensive presentation of the Honorverse. Instead, its function will be to provide something which is relatively quick-playing (but with enough challenges to make it interesting) and is intended to give people who never heard of Honor Harrington or the Honorverse a "once over lightly" introduction to them. At a later stage, a game designed around storylines set in the context of the novels, although not re-creating any specific aspects or scenes of those novels, will be introduced. By then we should be well into the finalized graphics for the movie, which will provide a deeper and more complex gaming environment which will also do a much better job of allowing the gamer to experience the Honorverse more fully.

The graphic novel -- "Tales of Honor" -- will be written by Matt Hawkins of Top Cow with significant editorial input from your humble servant. Matt and I have had a couple of conferences now, and I'm feeling about as confident as anyone can before words are actually on paper that we're very much on the same page. I think I've come up with a very good "window" into Honor's story that's going to work well both with the story of the novels and with Matt's storytelling style. The artist who's been proposed for the project does beautiful work, although I haven't yet seen any examples of how he handles the sort of technology-heavy environment which is going to be so much a part of the Honorverse. If he does half as well with that as he's done with the aspects of his work I have seen, however, this is going to be a very, very satisfying visual experience. Season 1 of the graphic novel will be released in "traditional" format by Top Cow in January 2014 with the digital comic released through Comixology. Season 2 would be scheduled for July-November 2014, Season 3 for a January-May 2015 schedule, and with ongoing expansion beyond that as we get closer to (and possibly following) the movie release date.

There are still some questions which are unresolved at this point -- which, again, I emphasize is a very early stage in the creative process. For example, will there be webisodes? Will there be a fully developed console-style game coordinated with the movie's actual release? How are we going to structure the supporting website? One thing that does seem likely is that I'll be producing some additional, original fiction for the website and that we'll be developing our own wiki-style site with a layered approach that will allow the newcomer to skim once over lightly and those who are interested in more detail to explore more deeply.

Evergreen will be attending Honorcon this November, at which time they'll be prepared to present a quick "script teasers/where we stand" panel, along with "work in progress" artwork for sets, costumes, etc.; work in progress on the graphic novel; a preview of the initial iOS/Android game; and a preview of the Honor Harrington movie site. They'll also be there for the specific purpose of soliciting fan input, so if you want to get your two cents worth in, Greenville would be a good place to be in November. 

For those of you who are interested, Scott, Alison Haskovec (Evergreen's VP for Development), and I did an interview with D6 Generation which will be the basis for one of their podcasts sometime Real Soon Now. Between this and that interview, I think you'll be fairly well brought up to date on where we are on this at the moment.

As I say, I'm excited. Every author has to feel some trepidation when someone suggests turning his book(s) into a movie, but in this case trepidation very much takes an extreme backseat to the enthusiasm I'm feeling right now.

DRM (...) represent(s) an exercise in mindless stupidity that would shame any self-respecting dinosaur
Eric Flint; http://www.baens-universe.com/articles/principle
Random pithy quote: Never take life seriously. Nobody gets out alive anyway.. (jiltanith.thefifthimperium.com)

David schreibt am Abschluß der Solaren-Liga-Geschichte

Zitat von »Duckk(Admin auf forums.davidweber.net)«

Got a call from David earlier, he is 90,000 words into Uncompromising Honor, which will be the book that wraps up the situation with the Solarian League. He doesn't have time to visit the forums, because if he does, he'll never leave.

DRM (...) represent(s) an exercise in mindless stupidity that would shame any self-respecting dinosaur
Eric Flint; http://www.baens-universe.com/articles/principle
Random pithy quote: Never take life seriously. Nobody gets out alive anyway.. (jiltanith.thefifthimperium.com)

Zitat von »David Weber«

“Do you know what time it —?”

Kevin Usher stopped dead as he opened his door and the doorbell stopped buzzing.

Eloise Pritchart stood there, her dark slacks streaked with something far darker, the cuffs of her white blouse black and stiff, her face still smeared with streaks of dried blood her mopping hands had missed. There was more blood in her hair, under her fingernails, and the nightmare heart of hell was in her eyes.

“Eloise?” he said very, very softly.

“Kevin,” she replied, and his jaw clenched. He’d never heard that flat, cold deadness from her.

He moved wordlessly aside and she stepped past him so the door could close behind her. She looked around his living room as if she’d never seen it before, but he didn’t think she was really seeing it now, either. She simply stood there, hands by her sides, her expression empty.

He touched her shoulder, and she let him steer her as if she were a mannequin as he seated her in one of his well-worn armchairs.

“Eloise?” he said again and she blinked. Then, slowly, those desecrated eyes focused upon him..

“She’s gone, Kev.” The words were no longer dead, and his heart flinched from the endless ocean of pain that filled them, instead. “She’s gone,” she said again. “Just . . . gone. I’ll never see her again. Never hug her. Never —”

Her voice broke, her shoulders quivered, and she buried her face in her hands. She jackknifed forward in the armchair, and he went to his knees beside her, wrapping his arms about her, as the sobs tore loose at last and ripped the heart right out of her.

Zitat von »David Weber«

Dark Fall

●I●

Hear now my song and weep.

Hear of the blackness of dark fall,
Of death dust and destruction of all.
Hear now of terror on night-black wings,
Of heartbreak, horror, the end of all things,
Of destruction below and death from the sky
On the day human history died.
— The Dark Fall Saga.

* * * * * * * * * *

“I can’t believe even Pierre and Saint-Just would have done something like this,” President Eloise Pritchart told Admiral Thomas Theisman. She thought about what she’d just said for a moment, then snorted harshly. “I suppose what I really mean is that I don’t want to believe it.”

The two of them stood on the admiral’s bridge of Theisman’s temporary flagship, gazing at the main visual display as RHNS Tourbillon decelerated into Sanctuary orbit. Sanctuary was a gorgeous blue, green, and tan marble ahead of the battlecruiser and the feeble sunlight of the K8 star its inhabitants called Refuge gleamed from the vast sprawl of its orbital shipyards. The steadily growing skeletons of capital ships seemed to be everywhere, long chains of in-system freighters trekked steadily towards them from the orbital smelters, the tiny dots of hard-suited construction workers glowed like twice a thousand fireflies, and she had to admit it was a tremendously impressive sight.

“To be fair, although it feels distinctly unnatural to even try to be fair to the two of them, they didn’t start it, Madame President,” Theisman said. “We can thank President Harris and the Legislaturalists for that.”

“And for so many other things, as well.” Pritchart’s magnificent topaz eyes darkened with memory and old pain. “But Pierre could damned well have done things differently once he took over! And what he should have done was go public, even if he didn’t want to give up the system’s exact coordinates! Damn it, these people deserved better than this! They should’ve at least had the rights he was prepared to let our own people have, and they didn’t get even that much!”

“I can’t be sure, but I suspect from some of the file copies of memos between him and Saint-Just that he seriously considered going public immediately after the coup,” Theisman said. “That was before he realized they had to continue the war against the Manties if they were going to stay in power, of course. I think Saint-Just accepted that they would before Pierre did and that that’s why he argued against the idea of telling anyone who didn’t absolutely need to know that the place even existed, much less how it had come to exist.”

“You’re not making it any better, Admiral,” Pritchart said, turning to look at him coldly.

She still didn’t know Theisman very well. For that matter, she still wasn’t positive he’d meant it when he insisted the head of the provisionally restored Republic of Haven had to be a civilian. To be fair, he hadn’t showed a single sign that he didn’t mean it, and Javier and Lester Tourville both spoke of him in glowing terms, and so did Kevin Usher. That counted with Eloise Pritchart — counted for a lot — but it was her job to be suspicious. Haven had staggered from façade democracy, to totalitarianism, to a dictatorship that was still worse for far too long. She’d lost a beloved sister, more friends than she could count, and too many pieces of her own soul fighting that process.

It would end. It would end now, with her. With Thomas Theisman, too, if he was serious, but it would end, whatever it cost and whatever it took.

“I’m not trying to make it ‘better,’ Madame President,” the Chief of Naval Operations and Pritchart’s Secretary of War replied, meeting her cold eyes. “I’m trying to explain it.”

“And to justify going right on doing it.”

Pritchart’s voice was even colder than her eyes, and Theisman’s nostrils flared ever so slightly. He started a quick reply, but stopped himself. Then he nodded.

“For certain values of ‘going on doing it,’ that’s exactly what I’m suggesting, Madame President,” he said very levelly. “I fully agree that the way in which Harris and Public Safety went about doing it was reprehensible. Unfortunately, I can’t shoot Saint-Just all over again for it.” Something that could have been anger flashed in Pritchart’s eyes as he reminded her who’d actually accomplished the Committee of Public Safety’s overthrow. “Nor does the fact that their decision about these people’s fundamental rights was as immoral as everything else they did mean we don’t need the star system’s capabilities. Or that we don’t need to keep its very existence as dark as we possibly can for as long as we possibly can. I don’t like it, either, Madame President, but it’s part of my job to tell you things like that.”

It was Pritchart’s turn to pause before she fired back. She gazed up into the taller Theisman’s face for a long, taut moment, then gave him the grudging nod his honesty and forthrightness deserved. One thing she had discovered about Theisman was his total lack of patience with the carefully phrased, easily disavowed, cover-your-ass sort of policy recommendations which had become the norm under the Committee of Public Safety. When he sent her a memo, she could at least be certain that it said what he truly thought, set forth in clear and logical progression. She might not agree with it, but she never had to wonder if he’d told her the truth as he saw it and given her his very best advice based upon it.

“Believe me, Admiral,” she said finally, “I understand the basis for your argument. And if Wilhelm and Kevin are right about High Ridge, your points are even stronger . . . from a military and pragmatic perspective. It’s the morality that bothers me. Expediency is a slippery slope. Rob Pierre discovered that.”

She sighed and looked back at the visual display.

“I knew him before the coup,” she went on in a softer tone, almost as if she were speaking only to herself. “I know the Committee of Public Safety turned into something he’d never envisioned, never wanted, when he started, and he changed in the process, too. I don’t want to go down that same slope. I won’t.”

“With all due respect, Madame President, you’re not Rob Pierre and I’m not Oscar Saint-Just.” Her eyes came back to him, and he shrugged. “Well, you’re not Pierre, and I’m pretty sure I’m not Saint-Just. The fact that my proposal disturbs you so deeply pretty much proves that in your case. The fact that I’ve made it does seem to indicate the jury may still be out in mine, I suppose. But while I don’t think I’m another Saint-Just waiting to happen, there is one thing I have in common with him.”

“And what might that be, Admiral?” Pritchart asked warily, and he smiled ever so slightly.

“Oscar Saint-Just was a sociopath, which I don’t think I am,” he told her. “But he was a very loyal sociopath. Rob Pierre was Chairman of the Committee of Public Safety, and even when Saint-Just disagreed with him, he never forgot who was Chairman . . . and who wasn’t. I may disagree with you upon occasion, but I’ve got a pretty good memory, too.” He shrugged again. “Madame President, you’re President of the Republic of Haven . . . and I’m not.”

She looked at him for another long moment, then nodded slightly.

“Point taken, Admiral,” she said. “Point taken.”

DRM (...) represent(s) an exercise in mindless stupidity that would shame any self-respecting dinosaur
Eric Flint; http://www.baens-universe.com/articles/principle
Random pithy quote: Never take life seriously. Nobody gets out alive anyway.. (jiltanith.thefifthimperium.com)